The Gorse & Hildegard

Viriditas

Greening Power

The Rising Sap of the Trees

“The only sin in life is drying up.” Hildegard von Bingen

Energy of life, becoming attuned to the zest of life.

“You must get wet, and green, and moist and juicy”. (Letter to the Bishops)

Sprituality is about staying green, staying creative.

Listen to the music of the spheres of the universe.

In the beginning was the sound of nature… the music of the earth beings.

F Sharp is the green note, chlorophyll vibrates at a high overtone of F Sharp.

Via Positiva: our experience of awe, wonder, joy, reverence and gratitidue, Via Negativa our experience of silence, emptiness, mindfulness, contemplation suffering, grief, loss, chaos and the dark night of the soul. Via Creativa.. From the emptiness of Via Negativa comes birth, new ideas. Creativity comes from both Via Positiva and Via Negativa. Creativity needs stimulating.

Via Transformativa: compassion, justice , healing, celebrations, lift up the energy of the community. In a spiral they come to us, justice brings joy, via positive comes round again, more people enjoy justice, begin to trust, Creativity brings joy.

We will all walk the four paths as we travel through life. Positiva begins with gratitude and ends with justice and compassion. We are born into the original goodness and into original blessing of the Goddess. Cultivating goodness. Forgiveness, compassion and Joy.

We must return to intimacy with nature. That is what Hildegard would tell anyone who would listen. Even when she was excommunicated age 81, she still was a rebel with a wild yell. Telling it as it is.

Plant Consciousness

Photosynthesis – in the Avalonian Wheel we call this season “The Greening”, the return of the green fire in the land.

This essay is an extract from our Teaching manual and may not be copied, plagarised etc.

It is the time when all the trees and plants fill up with the newly emerging sun, gathering strength and vitality from her.  It is the time of breathing in the newness in nature, young animals being born, everything is fresh and shining. As humans we revel in this time, it awakens us, stretching from a long winter sleep. And yet, despite seeing all the beauty around us, there are still many of us not conscious of the challenges nature is experiencing, the underlying poisoning, the spraying of the fields with destructive chemicals that run into our waters, are consumed by the animals we eat, us and our children. There is an epidemic of immune deficiency diseases coming from the poisons in our food. Every mouthful we take might well have another helping of neurotoxins for us. Undertakers in Britain have voiced their concern that bodies are not decomposing, and that the sludge left behind by burning bodies in the crematorium takes a great deal of cleaning, delaying cremations. The situation with our disconnect with nature is considered by some to be at a point of no return. Our plant friends are screaming, and few are listening.

How do we heal the disconnection with the spiritual and the natural world?

At the moment we are going through a crisis – a dissociation – a mental disorder that has affected our
relationship with the natural world – hence fracking, cutting forests, polluting seas. This week my husband told me that it has now been reported that each river in the UK is to varying degrees poisoned by our own government. We live in symbiosis with the plant world –  our energies are reciprocal – we breathe in particles of the trees and plants when we go for a walk. The Japanese call it Shinrin Yoku – tree bathing.

It goes in to our bloodstream, our cells, hence we feel the deep connection with our land, hiraeth – heimweh – home sickness when we are away.

Do these particles carry memories? Memories of people who may be feeding them now as fertilizer? Could that be the lives we remember?  We need to shift from the Ego to the Eco.

Last but not least our secret weapon, the versatile and helpful Gorse.  As you can see, many of the plants this season are about defence & protection.

Nettle/Gorse/Hawthorn/Blackberry: all of these are excellent for defensive magic, anything you find with a spike, buzz or burn, they are your friend when there is conflict and opposition in your life. Remember though: do no harm.

You don’t have to start the fight but you can finish it with the help of your spiky allies.

Each has an inbuild defence mechanism. We humans have a similar mechanism, which is healthy when developed correctly. Unfortunately most of us carry childhood woundings, and our perceptions can become skewed by the experiences we have in our early childhood.

A teacher recently shared a very important message with me:

“I trust people to a certain extent , but when I see them acting from their childhood wounding, when they react and project, thrash around, lashing out without being conscious of whom they may strike, I put my protection up. I don’t trust people who are unaware of their trauma and release indiscriminately.”

I think she has an excellent point. We have a very developed empathic sense, we often are aware when others are struggling, and there is no shame in protecting yourself from harm. Certainly the plants do it, and only if you approach them with care and reverence will they gladly share their gifts with you.

Bach Flower Remedies are as close to Plant Spirit Medicine as we can get nowadays here in the UK!
: Gorse…is the remedy for people who have given up belief and hope. Gorse represents a stronger kind of downheartedness than the Gentian state, because Gorse people wilfully refuse to be encouraged, so certain are they that their case is hopeless. If ill, they may think themselves incurable, and that nothing can be done.

Nevertheless, Dr Bach classified Gorse as a remedy for uncertainty, and not as a remedy for despair alongside Sweet Chestnut. This demonstrates that the main problem with Gorse people is a loss of faith: if we can be persuaded to see things in a different light there is usually a way forward. This is what the Gorse remedy helps to achieve.

Affirmation
Now let us think about those who have been ill for some time, or even a long time. There is again every reason to be hopeful of benefit, either improvement or recovery. Never let anyone give up hope of getting well. [Bach]Gorse is said to bring witches, spirits and dragons if taken into the house. Mars is the ruler of Gorse, which can be used for protection, both personal protection and psychical.

What type of positive affirmation could we come up with for Gorse needing folk?

Keeper of the Mysteries, defender of the deserving, I channel your wisdom, I feel your love.

Habitat
Gorse grows on most soils but will avoid chalk and lime, preferring the slight acidity of moorlands and dry sandy commons. In summer the ripe seeds explode and so a thick clump of Gorse will slowly spread and dominate an area. It grows mainly on the western fringe of Europe and can be killed by severe frosts.
For me it was important to find out all I could about remedies that might help the people I cared for in the cancer ward. We need to be aware that the ‘health care machine’ has blunted many a dedicated health professionals with constant criticism and admonishments on finances, paperwork, fear states about being sued, medical ethics boards. …. We who come voluntarily are in the position to do more caring and holding than the staff around us. We can bring in our tools of healing that others may not have access to, the holistic alternative wellness tools like Bach remedies, energy healing, soul healing and midwifery. In this we are blessed. We don’t have the same restrictions and constraints. I certainly find that in my work in Taunton with Marie Curie.

Kim Uildriks writes: It still amazes me how some physicians can take away a person’s will to live with just a few words. In 2000, I was working at Denmark’s well-known Humlegaarden Complementary Cancer Clinic. Many of the people I saw there had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had come to this clinic for one last try at a cure. I found some of them were in a rather dilapidated state emotionally. Sue was one of my clients there. When she first came to see me she looked the picture of misery. Her daughter had committed suicide a few years before and in the last year Sue herself had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. At the beginning of the treatment I held Sue’s right hand to intuitively test for which Bach flower remedy she might need. When I determined it was Gorse, I asked her if her hope needed strengthening. At that she burst into tears, telling me how her doctor had taken her hope away by saying there was no cure for her and that trying complementary medicine was a waste of time.  “If only he had said, ‘Well, you could give it a try,’” Sue wept. “Instead, he has stripped me of my will to live.”  I wondered what right her doctor had to say that. No doubt, it was based on his experience of Sue’s disease. But, even if he was right, surely it must have been obvious something could be done to ease Sue’s emotional pain.

In such misery, for the first three sessions I had with Sue, she just cried and cried. I had not come across such deep pain before and thought there might never be an end to her tears. Sue said she had never been able to cry when her daughter had taken her life, or even when Sue had been diagnosed with cancer. Now it was all coming out; there were just floods of tears. To match this, during the light touch healing I did on Sue, I experienced huge amounts of healing energy enter her body. At times I felt it entering her with such force that afterwards Sue reported she felt bruised across her chest. This was even though I had not put my hands on her with any more than the lightest touch.
Also over those sessions through intuitively selecting various Bach flower remedies, I was able to access deeper aspects of Sue’s emotional pain. It was as though I was peeling the layers of an onion. At first, Sue had loss of hope, represented by Gorse, and then great fear about the future, which was revealed through the remedy Mimulus. This was followed by Pine to help her with regret and forgiveness.”

I am a staunch believer in the efficacy of flower essences, whether Dr. Bach or home made ones. In sprays they are especially helpful in conjunction with other ingredients.

Bee Helygen Vernal Equinox 2024